1. Field Of The Invention
This invention relates generally to tents, specifically to an improved tent with supporting poles and mating canvas rings.
2. Prior Art
Camping or backpacking tents are small, portable shelters that generally include a flexible sheet barrier suspended by several intersecting hoop-shaped poles to form a dome with flat sections (polyhedral Shapes). Examples of such tents are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,863,659 to Gillis (1975), 4,716,918 to Hayashida et al. (1988), and 4, 827,958 to Cantwell et al. (1989). The poles are bent and extended through rings distributed along the arched sheet barrier or canvas. A typical tent is stored completely disassembled: the poles are disconnected from the sheet barrier. It is erected by laboriously sliding each of the poles through the rings along a path of rings one ring at a time, much like threading a shower rod through the rings of a shower curtain. Because the pole or ring paths intersect each other, the poles can be easily threaded through rings on the wrong path. Assembling the tent is thus a confusing and time consuming trial-and-error process. Smooth assembly can only be achieved with enough experience and by remembering the complex pole paths. My U.S. Pat. No. 5,197,504 (1993) shows a tent with poles that each include a retainer or stop member attached to one end for preventing the rings from sliding off. Each pole remains threaded in its rings along the correct pole path, so that the tent can be easily erected by simply sliding the rings along the poles, without having to thread the poles through the rings one at a time. As a result, the speed and ease of erecting the tent are greatly improved. However, this requires the poles and the barrier to be stored together, and therefore transported by a single person.